Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of China’s Alibaba Group, has announced the opening of four new data centres by the end of 2016 in the Dubai, Europe, Australia and Japan. As a major milestone of Alibaba Cloud’s global expansion, the new centres will boost its data centre network to 14 locations, covering key economic centres around the world. The data centre in the Middle East, located […]
Photo A view of Aleppo from rebel-held territory. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy to Syria, said he feared that the eastern part of the city could be razed before Donald J. Trump is inaugurated. Credit Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters BEIRUT, Lebanon — The United Nations special envoy to Syria offered unsolicited advice on Monday to President-elect Donald J. Trump: Pay attention to what happens between now […]
The dollar’s post-US election surge has investors contemplating not whether they have overdone the rally but just how far the greenback can rise and how quickly it will get there. A series of currency landmarks, which not long ago investors thought too distant to worry about, have already been trampled by the dollar’s relentless march. The euro fell below $1.06, the yen weakened towards ¥111 against the […]
The United Arab Emirates could refer the United States to the World Trade Organisation over anti-dumping charges levied on steel pipes, a senior official said on Monday. The US International Trade Commission announced on Friday it was taking measures against UAE, Oman and Pakistan in relation to circular welded carbon-quality steel pipes, after a Department of Commerce investigation found them to be sold in the United States […]
Ending all speculations, NASA has presented its paper on the new rocket propulsion concept known as EmDrive, which has caught the imagination of all space enthusiasts despite defying the core laws of physics and workability. The long-awaited EmDrive paper of NASA has now been peer-reviewed and published with the title, “Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio-Frequency Cavity in Vacuum.” Published online on Nov. 17 in the […]
November 21, 2016 by: Peter Wells in Hong Kong and Michael Hunter in London Monday 08.00 GMT. Oil prices are making notable gains, tracking the prospect of a deal on output cuts between major producers, setting Brent crude on course for its first two-session advance since early October. Brent crude, the international benchmark, is up 1.3 per cent at $47.47 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate is […]
TOKYO Asian shares were on the defensive on Monday, undermined by fears that the strength in the U.S. dollar and rising U.S. bond yields since Donald Trump’s election to president could accelerate fund outflows from emerging markets. MSCI’s broadest dollar-based index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS dipped 0.1 percent, staying near four-month lows. In local currency terms, many markets are up slightly. Japan’s Nikkei .N225 rose […]
The Malaysian central bank’s moves to curb what it describes as “speculative and damaging” offshore trading in the ringgit are causing disquiet among investors and raising concerns about the regulator’s handling of the markets. Bank Negara Malaysia has asked foreign banks to commit to stop trading the ringgit — Asia’s worst-performing currency against the US dollar in 2015 — in the offshore non-deliverable forwards market. Malaysian debt […]
newslide Man convicted of fraud over Kung Fu Panda drawings A Massachusetts man has been found guilty of backdating drawings he relied on as evidence in his lawsuit against DreamWorks Animation. It was claimed he had invented the title character in the 2008 film Kung Fu Panda and a jury in Boston convicted 51-year-old Jayme Gordon on four counts of wire fraud and three counts of perjury. […]
A protest rally in Malaysia against the government of Najib Razak — who is fighting allegations of grand corruption linked to a troubled state investment fund — brought thousands onto the streets of Kuala Lumpur but also spurred a widening official crackdown. Although Saturday’s rally passed off peacefully, 15 activists and opposition politicians have been arrested on charges which human rights campaigners described as “manufactured”. The charges […]
By Samuel Shen and John Ruwitch | SHANGHAI SHANGHAI Scores of Hong Kong-listed companies – many small – are on a roadshow blitz in China to whet the appetite of mainland investors ahead of the launch of a cross-border investment link between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Mainland investors are enthusiastic, viewing the cross-border channel as a way to buy relatively cheap growth companies and hedge against a […]
Chinese president Xi Jinping vowed on Saturday to open the door even wider to foreign business and play an even greater role in the process of globalisation as Beijing moved to take advantage of Donald Trump’s election and fears that he may herald a new era of US disengagement from Asia. Speaking to business leaders on the sidelines of a 21-country Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru, […]
By Mitra Taj and Caroline Stauffer | LIMA LIMA Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged on Saturday to further open the world’s second-largest economy as leaders of Asia-Pacific countries gathered in Peru to find new free-trade options after Donald Trump was s elected U.S. president on a protectionist platform. The annual APEC summit got under way in Lima just over a week after Trump’s surprise victory dashed hopes […]
China’s domestic stock markets look set to be denied entry into international benchmarks for the fourth year in a row next year unless Chinese regulators remove “major obstacles” before June. Dimitris Melas, head of equity research at MSCI, provider of the benchmark MSCI Emerging Markets index, gave a downbeat assessment on Thursday of the prospects for China’s A-shares to be included in the index next year in […]
By Rosalba O’Brien and Mitra Taj | LIMA LIMA Leaders of Pacific rim nations scrambled to find new free-trade options on Friday as a looming Donald Trump presidency in the United States sounded a possible death knell for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). After lower-level meetings, U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin were due to arrive at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation […]
Pacific Rim leaders pledged on Friday to resist a new wave of protectionism as US President-elect Donald Trump loomed large over the opening of the 21-country Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit. Mr Trump’s surprise victory in this month’s US presidential election has upended the Obama administration’s plans for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other countries and opened the door to Chinese rivals. It has also raised […]
China has weakened the renminbi’s trading band for a record 11th straight day, taking its currency to an eight-year low as expectations of US interest rate rises buoyed the dollar against the region’s currencies. This puts the renminbi within a hair’s breadth of suffering a 10 per cent decline versus the dollar since the People’s Bank of China caught markets by surprise with its one-off devaluation in […]
Five years ago, the only luxury brand that was dabbling in the world of technology was Vertu. And far from becoming a dominant player in the mobile market, it remains an outsider – despite the fact that its product is, in fact, a piece of technology. But over the last few years – probably on the back of brands like Apple and Google increasingly vying for luxury […]
HONG KONG Chinese telecoms equipment group ZTE Corp (000063.SZ) (0763.HK) said on Friday it has won a further reprieve to Feb. 27 on export restrictions that were imposed on the company by the U.S. government. In March, the U.S. Commerce Department hit ZTE with some of the toughest-ever U.S. export restrictions for allegedly breaking sanctions against Iran but has since issued temporary reprieves on the curbs. The […]
Every autumn, Hong Kong restaurants serve a seasonal delicacy: hairy crabs, shipped the same day from lakes around the Chinese city of Suzhou. But the territory’s food safety inspectors recently made a shocking discovery: some crabs in this year’s consignment contained dangerous levels of cancer-causing chemicals. Even worse, the crabs appeared to come from Lake Tai, a model in China’s fight against pollution after a multiyear, multibillion-dollar […]
JPMorgan has agreed to pay $264m to settle a US probe into its employment of well-connected Chinese “princelings” to win business. The settlement, expected to be announced on Thursday, would be the first to arise from a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry launched in 2013 to determine whether bank hiring practices breached the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The 1977 law bans companies from paying bribes to […]
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s largest bank by assets, has become a settlement bank for the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange (DGCX), the exchange said on Tuesday, allowing more investors to clear transactions in yuan. ICBC becomes the second Chinese bank to join DGCX’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Dubai Commodities Clearing Corporation, as a clearing and settlement bank. Bank of China became a member in […]
Wednesday 09:20 GMT. European stocks are tracking a mostly positive showing in Asia as Wall Street eyes record highs on hopes the Trump administration’s pledge of infrastructure spending and tax cuts will boost the US economy. The dollar and government bond yields are a touch firmer, keeping gold and industrial commodity prices in check. After the FTSE Asia-Pacific equity index rose 0.6 per cent, the pan-European Stoxx […]
Long-simmering tensions between Donald Trump and the Washington foreign policy establishment burst into the open on Tuesday after a respected former congressman quit the transition team and a leading neoconservative publicly warned colleagues not to join the incoming administration. Mike Rogers, former chair of the House intelligence committee who had been one of the senior figures advising the transition on national security, stepped down as head of […]
